


More Than Words

by Lunasong365



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Bookshop, Literary Quotes, M/M, Valentine's Day, kiss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-13
Updated: 2016-02-13
Packaged: 2018-05-20 04:14:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5991367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lunasong365/pseuds/Lunasong365
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Aziraphale invites Crowley to an unusual Valentine's Day party at the bookshop.</p>
            </blockquote>





	More Than Words

**Author's Note:**

> The wine selection below, Gewürztraminer, is described as an aromatic wine with a rich golden colour, off-dry to medium-sweet, with a nose of roses, lychee, passion fruit, floral notes, honey, spice, and a smoky aroma similar to burnt incense. It has higher alcohol and less acidity than a Moscato, and tastes sweeter than it actually is. The grape itself thrives in cooler climes. I thought it paired nicely with this story.
> 
> The title is borrowed from a 1990 song performed by Extreme. It was climbing the charts in the UK during Valentine's Day 1991 where it eventually peaked at #2.  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLudUaNpU3M

“Well, I thought it was a good idea,” Aziraphale said indignantly.

Crowley snorted. “Since when do you encourage anyone to come in here?”

“If you must know,” sniffed Aziraphale, “it’s an initiative of the Waldour Street Merchants’ Association. We’re all supposed to do something to promote our neighbourhood shops for the holiday. I thought having a Valentine’s Day book reading would be appropriate. Everyone can share their favourite passages about love with the others.”

Aziraphale had only been to an Association meeting once – and that was just last week. He’d been requested to appear regarding some sort of requirement that shops must display posted hours in the front window. He’d attended with the intention to make the salient observation that it would be much more truthful if he just left the CLOSED sign up all the time.

But the first item on the agenda had been presented by an earnest young proprietor who’d wanted to help boost local business by encouraging collaboration on theme-based promotions. As the other merchants excitedly discussed how they could work together on advertisements for the upcoming Valentine’s Day holiday, Aziraphale found himself drawn into the conversation. Or maybe it was toward the tempting plate of biscuits from the Piece of Cake bake shop in the centre of the table. At any rate, he soon found himself signed up to participate. As the evening grew long with dialogue about holiday-themed particulars, the original agenda was abandoned. The meeting adjourned without the anticipated censure of the bookseller’s shop-keeping habits.

“…it is one of the major spending holidays,” Aziraphale wrapped up.

Crowley sighed with satisfaction. “Yes, it was one of my better ideas. No better way to spread anxiety and insecurity than implying if you’re not paired up with someone, there’s something wrong with you.” He took a sip of tea and waved his hand toward the angel. “Reading quotes from books? That doesn’t necessitate spending money at all.”

Aziraphale smiled happily. “Yes, you’re right! It’s a way I can participate with the Association and still not sell a book!” The angel refilled both his and Crowley’s cups, then set the teapot down with a sudden thought. “Crowley! Would you like to come?”

The demon yawned and scratched the back of his neck with feigned deliberation. He rested his chin back onto his folded hands and regarded the being across the table. “Are you implying,” he inquired, “that you want to be paired with me?”

“Oh, NO! No,” Aziraphale added more moderately. “I just thought you might enjoy it.”

Crowley chuckled with amusement. “Sure. Like I have nothing better to do on Valentine’s Day than sit in the front room of your shop with a bunch of bookworms whose idea of a good time is tossing quotes about love at each other!”

“Well, do you?” the angel said pointedly. “You might learn something.”

Crowley sighed. “IF I show up,” he answered, “what time should I be here?”

 

xoxox

 

Crowley parked the Bentley in its usual spot in front of the bookshop and pulled his muffler snugly against the brisk February breeze. He stepped up on the pavement and took a moment to admire the front window display at Intimate Books, the shop next to Aziraphale’s. The proprietor had thoughtfully created a lovely arrangement of book and videotape covers with little pink and red hearts over the naughty bits.

Strolling next door, Crowley made sure to let the door bang as he entered Aziraphale’s shop. The angel looked over with a frown from where he was hanging a red crepe-paper bunting. “You’re early. I’m not yet done setting up.”

Crowley shrugged off his coat and flopped onto the sofa. “That’s OK,” he said. “I’ll watch you.”

Aziraphale’s glare from the top of the stepladder burned through Crowley like an admonition from Heaven.

“Dear, I could really use your help. And you didn’t shut the door all the way when you came in. I don’t want anyone to come in before I’m ready.”

Crowley sidled his long legs off the sofa and ambled over to the entrance, pulling the shop door shut. He gave it an extra tug for good measure and groused, “Fine…what would you like me to do?” Crossing the room toward Aziraphale gave Crowley an eyeful of the angel’s ample posterior. He grinned in appreciation.

Aziraphale made a half-turn on the ladder, offering an alternate view. “Would you please help me finish hanging the bunting? It seems to be one of those jobs best done with three hands.”

“You could have three hands.”

“I choose not to. Take the sellotape and this end, and tape it over there on the edge of that bookshelf and I’ll do the twisty part and tape my end over here.”

Crowley surreptitiously vanished the dust so the tape would stick.

By the time the two had depleted the roll of crepe, the room looked relatively festive. Aziraphale slit open a package of holiday cutouts. Crowley groaned. “No. No cupids.”

Aziraphale considered the plump little angel in his hand. “I daresay I agree with you. Let’s just use the hearts and mistletoe.”

“I don’t think you’ll find any…oh, well there it is.”

Aziraphale cheerfully hung up the rest of the decorations whilst Crowley wandered into the back room and sampled a biscuit off the tray on the worktop. Aziraphale called from the other room, “Crowley, dear!”

“Mmf.”

“Would you please bring the tray with the biscuits out here and set it on the coffee table in front of the sofa?”

Crowley grabbed a bottle of Gewürztraminer from the lower cupboard with two wine glasses in one hand and balanced the biscuit tray on the other. He glided into the front room and grandly set the refreshments on the low table with a flourish. Aziraphale raised an eyebrow.

“I really wasn’t planning on serving wine this evening.”

“In my experience,” drawled Crowley, “humans appreciate having alcohol available at social events. I know I’ll need it to get through tonight.” He pulled the cork, poured a glass, and handed it to the angel. “Care to join me?”

Aziraphale dithered for the smallest of moments. “Thank you,” he said sincerely, taking the glass and sitting down in his armchair with a grateful sigh. “I am just a little worried about having a crowd in the shop. Would you mind terribly if I rehearsed some readings and quotes with you?”

Crowley stopped in the middle of pouring his own glass. “About love,” he said flatly.

“Well yes, about love,” answered Aziraphale. “That’s what the holiday is about, is it not?”

“I thought it was about buying ostentatious gifts as a measure of one’s worth” Crowley muttered, “but sure, I’ll listen to you.” He sat opposite Aziraphale on the sofa. “These are good biscuits, by the way.”

“Yes, I agree,” Aziraphale concurred. “They’re from a bakery called Piece of Cake. It’s just a couple blocks from here. I’ve been getting my exercise by walking up there every day.” He leaned over and selected a frosted sugar heart. “Well, let’s see.

 _“They loved each other because everything around them willed it, the trees and the clouds and the sky over their heads and the earth under their feet. Perhaps their surrounding world, the strangers they met in the street, the wide expanses they saw on their walks, the rooms in which they lived or met, took more delight in their love than they themselves did.”_ _ 1 _He looked expectantly at Crowley.

“Er. _Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend.”_ 2

“Well done!” the angel beamed. He clasped his hands in his lap and continued, _“I have for the first time found what I can truly love–I have found you. You are my sympathy–my better self–my good angel–I am bound to you with a strong attachment. I think you good, gifted, lovely: a fervent, a solemn passion is conceived in my heart; it leans to you, draws you to my centre and spring of life, wrap my existence about you–and, kindling in pure, powerful flame, fuses you and me in one."_ 3

Crowley snorted. “Good angel? I have no idea what she is talking about. How about _Doubt thou the stars are fire; Doubt that the sun doth move; Doubt truth to be a liar; But never doubt I love._ _4_ Stars are fusion, by the way. Not fire.”

“It’s poetry, dear, not science. And it’s a lovely selection.” Aziraphale refilled their glasses with the aromatic white wine. He leaned forward, looked intently into the demon’s shielded eyes and recited, _“I see you everywhere, in the stars, in the river; to me you’re everything that exists; the reality of everything.”_ _5_  They stared at each other, as if mutually transported to another plane by the sentiment, until the moment was broken by the blustering wind rattling the panes in the front window.

A draught leaked through the ancient window seals and Crowley shivered, but he wasn’t convinced the sudden chill was the reason. If anything, he felt increasingly warm and tingly. _“I wish I’d done everything on Earth with you,”_ _ 6 _he said impulsively, with unprecedented sincerity.

“Oh,” said Aziraphale, noticing Crowley tremble. “You’re cold, poor dear. Here.” He took the tartan blanket off the back of his armchair and wrapped it around the demon, then sat beside him on the sofa. He took Crowley’s hand and quoted, _“_ _Today I begin to understand what love must be, if it exists...When we are parted, we each feel the lack of the other half of ourselves. We are incomplete like a book in two volumes of which the first has been lost. That is what I imagine love to be: incompleteness in absence.”_ 7 The angel gave Crowley’s hand a gentle squeeze, but didn’t let go. A sudden banging from the door made then both jump. Aziraphale started to get up to check it out, but Crowley pulled him back down.

“’S just the wind,” Crowley said. “It’s really starting to blow out there.” Cocooned in the blanket but snuggled next to Aziraphale, he professed, _“You anticipate what I would say, though you cannot know how earnestly I say it, how earnestly I feel it, without knowing my secret heart, and the hopes and fears and anxieties with which it has long been laden._ 8 Can’t say I really relate to that one,” he added, secure and content by his counterpart’s side. The door rattled again. They ignored it. Aziraphale again took Crowley’s hand, entwining the demon’s long fingers with his.

 _“I know this must come as something of a surprise to you_ ,” Aziraphale murmured, _”since all I've ever done is scorn you and degrade you and taunt you, but I have loved you for several hours now, and every second, more. I thought an hour ago that I loved you more than anyone has ever loved another, but a half hour after that I knew that what I felt before was nothing compared to what I felt then. But ten minutes after that, I understood that my previous love was a puddle compared to the high seas before a storm. Your eyes are like that, did you know? Well they are. How many minutes ago was I? Twenty? Had I brought my feelings up to then? It doesn't matter…I love you…”_ 9

 _“I know,”_ interrupted Crowley.

The angel’s eyes widened in surprise.

“What?” cracked Crowley. “It’s a quote. About love. From Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back.”

“That’s a movie, not a book,” Aziraphale demurred.

“Twentieth century storytelling, angel. There’s loads of great love stories on film as well as paper. Besides…mmkgh!”

Aziraphale kissed Crowley.

He wrapped his neatly manicured fingertips into the surprised demon’s dark hair and pulled him closer with deliberate care. Crowley tasted of biscuit and roses, sunshine and shadow, apple and amber and incense and sulphur, of sadness and snark, musk and fire, and oh, such eternal loneliness…

“I know,” echoed Aziraphale. He held him close as Crowley shuddered for reasons beyond the angel’s experience and for some which he knew all too well. As Crowley melted bonelessly into Aziraphale’s embrace, the demon’s tentative hands clutched at his worsted waistcoat. He buried his face into Aziraphale’s shoulder, seemingly gaining resolution and verve from the pounding of the angel’s heart. It reverberated into the very corners of the bookshop.

Crowley lifted his head and fervently returned the kiss. He reached round to loosen Aziraphale’s tied-back hair and fingered through the curls to loosen them into luminous unruly ringlets that wantonly mirrored the angel’s increasingly unreserved response. He sought the angel’s lips again, drawing greedily from Aziraphale’s essence before dropping a trail of kisses along the side of his face and down his neck and lowering him to the sofa…

As Aziraphale traced a path up Crowley’s elegant cheekbones, he caught a glimpse of the overhead mistletoe and smiled.

(That front doorknob had always been tricksy, prone to locking when pulled too hard.)

 

xoxox

 

Quote attribution:

1Boris Pasternak, _Doctor Zhivago_

2Martin Luther King, Jr., _Strength to Love_

3Charlotte Brontë, _Jane Eyre_

4 William Shakespeare, _Hamlet_

5 Virginia Woolf, _Night and Day_

6 F. Scott Fitzgerald, _The Great Gatsby_

7Edmond de Goncourt, _The Goncourt Journals_

8Charles Dickens, _A Tale of Two Cities_

9William Hoffman, _The Princess Bride_


End file.
